


resonance

by hartxfriar



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, Smut, argument i may be open to change my mind, but honestly, i'm more of a top draco girl, if someone could give me a good, oohhhh, sooo, this is gonna be angsty as fuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-11
Updated: 2017-06-11
Packaged: 2018-11-12 21:06:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11170086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hartxfriar/pseuds/hartxfriar
Summary: “Potter,” he says curtly, like it hurts, like Harry’s tearing razor blades into his wrist, watching blood bloom onto surface like red, red blossoms bursting through soil.Harry speaks for Draco after the war, and it feels like more a curse than a blessing. Also: McGonagall is enforcing a House Unity policy and guess who Harry's roommate is? (multichap)





	resonance

 

_ then. _

The room was dim, dark, only lit by the faint, fading light of the lightbulb fizzing and crackling and popping against the ceiling, and Harry Potter, savior, Boy-who-Lived, blinked and shifted, his vision blurring and then slowly,  _ finally, _ he thought, coming into focus.

“Okay?” his best friend, Hermione Granger said, appearing from behind him, all dark, bushy hair and burnt gold eyes that glistened and caught in the receding light.

He licked his lips, swallowed, felt something press and pound and crush painfully against his throat.

_ No, _ he wanted to say,  _ no, i’m not okay, now that everything had built up to the war, to magic and bloodshed and fire, and now that it’s over, now that people are dead and beneath the ground, now that it’s over, i feel empty, hollowed out. _

But instead, he shook his head and gave her a slight grin 

“Of course,” he breathed. “I’m just nervous for the trial, I guess.”

Hermione sighed, her gaze condescending, reprimanding almost, but she said nothing as she licked the length of her tongue and ran it along his hair.

“Lost cause, my hair is,” he said, as Hermione huffed impatiently at the tufts of black hair that shot up at the removal of her thumb, sharp, coarse, electric. “Don’t bother. It’s always been like that.”

Her eyes softened slightly, and she almost looked like she was about to cry, and Harry looked about in confusion, trying thinking of something to say, but instead she threw her arms around him and pulled him close.

“Everything,” Hermione whispered, “is going to be alright. You’ll finish this, and we’ll be able to… _ breathe.  _ Now that it’s over.”

_ Now that it’s over. _

_. _

_ So this is the aftermath of war,  _ Harry said, as he settled into his seat near the front of the Council and raked his eyes over the convicted.

The was Avery, sitting at the very left, eyes red, shoulders slumped back; he was running his fingers along the invisible binding on his wrists, pulling, scratching, but all to no avail; and then there was Antonin Dolohov, staring at the floor, fists clenched, red lines drawn across his skin.

Harry turned and saw Lucius Malfoy in the middle, light hair flying and whipping in the air of the room, eyes bloodshot as he looked towards his son Draco, to which Harry was just turning towards, towards the edge of the room––––

Draco Malfoy was staring right at him. 

Harry inhaled and held his gaze, staring into steel grey eyes that were as cold and harsh and  _ weak  _ somehow, and gone was the boy who had laughed and been a blur of blond hair and snark, of green robes and pale skin splitting open in an vacant bathroom, the floor stained a deep, dark crimson, instead in it’s place was a shadow of who once was, all edges and sharp points and a tiredness that radiated off him in waves, of a boy now cold by war and blood and  _ avada kedavra. _

Harry shivered slightly and turned away, his breath catching in his chest, in the space between his ribs and turned to Ron Weasley, his other best friend, who was now playing half heartedly with a snitch, tossing it in the air and catching it lightening fast with his quidditch reflexes,  _ his  _ stitch.

“Hey,” Harry hissed, but not harshly, and Ron jumped and placed the snitch gingerly on the table.

“Sorry, mate,” Ron said, eyes gazing around the room. “Just a little distracted, I guess. A room full of ex-Death Eaters do that to you.”

Harry nodded and Ron began speaking of the trials, of Hermione, to which she responded  _ I can HEAR you, Ronald, _ and he wasn’t paying attention, not  _ really,  _ not when there was this feeling at the very bottom of his stomach that he couldn’t quite shake when he looked at Draco Malfoy, and when he looked back.

“Ironic, isn’t it?” Hermione said softly from behind him, caressing his shoulder. “that after all these years, after Malfoy being your arch nemesis and all, of him treating us like absolute  _ garbage  _ for the whole of our education, that you’re speaking on behalf of him.”

Ron made a noise at the back of his throat. “You don’t have to do this, Harry.  _ Him,  _ he doesn’t deserve any of this.”

Hermione shot him a glare that was a sharp as bomb shards and shrapnel, and Ron flinched back visibly, leaning back into his seat.

“Malfoy, Malfoy’s  _ stupid,  _ okay? And reckless and he makes all the wrong choices for all the wrong reasons, but in the end, in the end, he was––“

“He was young, Hermione,” Ron shot back. “Well, so were we.”

He was about to say something, about how they still  _ were  _ young, how somehow the war had made all of them old,  _ aged,  _ but someone was calling his name at the front and he could feel the gasps in the crowd that gathered in the back, flashing lights and Quick Notes Quill that began scribbling furiously once he stood up and began to make his way to the front.

“Wish me luck,” he said to Ron and Hermione, and didn’t look back.

_. _

He stepped on to the pedestal and watched the faces in front of him, of Narcissa Malfoy, who was watching with grey colored eyes and hollowed cheeks drained completely of colour, she was sitting with her thumb carving scarlet lines into her thigh while she turned towards her husband and her son, both downing  vials of clear, clear vitaserum with bloodshot eyes and past aristocrat grace and litheness, of a past lost, and then before Harry could comprehend the way his head span when Draco Malfoy ran his robe sleeve across his mouth in one fluid, sweeping motion, the wizard at the front cleared his throat and said,  _ you can begin, Mr. Potter,  _ and he began.

Harry spoke of bitter rivals, of a blond boy with a Nimbus 2001 whizzing through the air past him, of skin split open in an empty bathroom, water running red with blood,of the boy who had stood at the astronomy tower, wand poised, voice trembling, of Narcissa Malfoy’s breath against his chek, feverishly hot while she she pressed two fingers against his wrist and whispered,  _ isDracointhecastleisdracointhecastleis— _

When he finished, he glanced at Ron and Hermione,Ron who had is mouth slightly agape, one eyebrow raised and Hermione,whose eyes were glittering and looked  _ proud _ , and felt relief wash over him, finally, finally, it was over. 

_. _

“Is it true, Harry,” Dumbledore said, “that you are going to speak on behalf of Draco Malfoy at his trial?”

Harry inhaled sharp, sharp oxygen, his lungs burning and scorching and cremating beneath his chest. 

“Yes,” he said, fingers brushing the gold pf the portrait frame, eyes downcast. “It's  _ complicated, _ really, Hermione roped me into it actually,she felt like Malfoy deserved forgiveness,  _ redemption, _ didn't deserve to spend the rest of his life rotting in Azkaban.”

“And what do you think,Mr.Potter?”Dumbledore asked softly, eyes gleaming, cobalt blue in stained, glassy watercolors. 

Harry thought of Draco Malfoy at the Manor, chin pointed, eyes red red red,  _ faded  _ somehow, how he held himself as if there was bullets caught in his skin, in the velvet green folds of his robes, as if there was arsenic in his veins. 

“I think,” Harry began carefully, “that I don't know what to think. Everyone is making conclusions, of people being good or evil or on the right side and he’s not in either category. He was a  _ terrible  _ person, you know, a right headed prat when we were in school, he was the kind of person who would poison your pumpkin juice out of pure spite, he would push me off my broom when we were playing quidditch if he had the chance, that's the kind of person he is. But I can't hate him, no matter how much of an idiot he was, and I don't know what that  _ means. _

Dumbledore sighed slightly, pushed his half moon spectacles further up the narrow bridge of his nose.

“I know that you've heard this before,” the older said. “But Draco Malfoy was young—”

Harry felt blood rush to the side of his face. 

“So was I,” he hissed, “so were all of us. And  _ yet—” _

_ “ _ I've always wondered what it was like,” Dumbledore stated, “growing up, isolated but from few families, seeing the world separated ,divided  by blood purity, being taught that you were superior, that the rest of the world was inferior, that the Dark Lord was the only way to greatness, to success and  _ power, _ and all at once realizing that the world was more complex than the way your family taught you but being caught in this war before it could catch up to you.”

Harry’s breathing became harsh, and his breath was caught in his throat while he stated at the portrait. 

“In the end,” Dumbledore said. “He was just a boy.”

Harry searched his mind for that cold, freezing night nearly three years ago, of his body anchored to the ground,magic rooting his veins in place while he screamed and screamed and screamed until his throat was raw and blood, thick with phlegm,of when Malfoy had pointed his wand at Dumbledore and Harry thought it was something out of one of his nightmares. 

_ I have to do this,  _ Draco Malfoy said, shivering _ , or else he'll kill me.  _

_ Draco, _ Dumbledore had whispered back,  _ I once knew a boy who made all of the wrong choices.  _

_. _

_ now.  _

The air was thin in the air as Harry soared higher, higher still,feeling oxygen and hitrotrodgen reverberate and echo through the marrow of his bones, and he felt the world fade and blur beneath him, there was nothing but the flutter of gold at the edge of gleaming green bushes and the burning orange of the Ginny’s hair, the faint splatter of gold freckles across the bridge of Ron’s nose. 

“Got it,” he breathed, laughing,as he extended his fingers and the snitch fell and tumbled into his grasp.

“ _ Bugger,”  _ Ginny screamed, rushing towards him in a blur of yellow and gold, nearly knocking him to the ground. “I swear—”

Her eyes were like the bright surface of dark, dark chocolate, and all at once, the days of blush tinted cheeks and frenzy kisses behind the dark, fading shadows of the Forbidden Forest, of his hands searching desperately  for hers and finding the warmth of her fingertips somewhere in the middle,nails running across skin as their hands intertwined and they faced the world, fierce, fearless, all of it seemed far out of reach, buried in the place where their childhood lay, firebolts and snowy Christmases and the familiar click of thestal heels, of lost youth. 

They had broken up nearly four months ago in an empty muggle playground; she was swinging upside down on a rusted swing set and he was sitting on top of monkey bars while they spoke.

She was the thing that he clung to during the haze of war,of blood and ash falling from the sky, but once the war had ended, once his childhood had ended, everything about her that made his heart ache had faded, had receded into an echo of what once was. 

And to her, he was the saviour, the Boy who Lived, the boy she had loved for almost all her life, who had rooted in her mind as the epitome of a hero, brave and unfaltering as he stood in a battlefield of fire and ash instead of the broken, bloody boy that he was. 

_ Now that— _ she had said.  _ Now that it’s over.   _

_ Friends?  _ He had said, meaning it with all that he was. 

_ No,  _ Ginny replied, hair askew, fluttering in the rise and fall of the wind before breaking into a bright, bright smile.   _ Best friends.  _

“All of you!” Molly Weasley yelled from beneath them, breaking Harry out of his trance. “Dinner! And letters!”

Harry settled into his seat and nearly reeled at the amount of owls, milky white and deep burgundy and bright, bright orange staring with huge, clear eyes at him, letters held in their beaks, and Harry felt a nostalgic pull at the bottom of his rib cage that expanded through the rest of his chest, of a metal, rusting cage and of Hedwig, a blur of ivory and amber, racing through the air. 

“Oh,  _ oh _ !” Hermione, who had already opened her letter, red wax seal still intact, said from next to him. “Harry, we can go  _ back _ !”

“Hermione, you're saying it like it's a bloody  _ good  _ thing,” Ron said harshly, taking a sip of pumpkin juice. “We still have to take NEWTS, which will probably kill us all.”

Harry took the letter from the owl’s beak and tore apart the envelope, Hermione screeching slightly as the seal broke and lay discarded, a disfigured pile of smudged crimson wax on the kitchen floor. 

_ Dear Mr. Potter, _

_ We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted into the eighth year program—a strictly optional program designed especially for seventh year students unable to attend the two-thousand-and-one term due to participation in the Second Wizarding War—at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.  _

_ Please find enclosed a list of necessary books and equipment below.  _

_ Term begins on 1 September. We await your owl confirming your enrollment by no later than 31 July.  _

_ Headmistress, _

_ Minerva Mcgonagall.  _

“I can't believe we’re all going back to school,” Hermione said, slinging her arm around his shoulders. “It's going to be like the old days all over again!”

Ron shook his head fervently, hair untangling and loosening and falling in front of his face,cascading in thin, fine strands a blazing, burning red. 

“She makes it sound like we had  _ fun, _ ” he said, nose wrinkling. “Which we did, but you almost died about  _ six times _ , which was the entire period of your magical education.”

He tilted his head back slightly and laughed, feeling sunlight seep through the window, glittering and warm and bright, bright gold, and he closed his eyes and shifted just so, just  _ so,  _ so the light was reflecting off the chipped, black edges of his glasses and warmth was spreading from his skin to the blood rushing, coursing through the purple and blue lines of his veins, so sunlight cast crepuscular, crystalline silhouettes onto the glass of the windowsill. 

“Of course I'm going,” Harry said, wrinkled his nose slightly as Hermione eyes lit up.  

Ron rolled his eyes, groaned around the flaky pastry in his mouth.

“We’re going,” he repeats. “But only for the food. And quidditch, maybe. And to see the look on Draco fucking Malfoy’s face–––”

“ _ Language, _ ” Molly Weasley hissed between clenched teeth. “You were not raised by savages.”

**.**

_ now. _

He stood in the middle of King’s Cross Station, fingers braced tightly against his cart, skin scraping against steel as his teeth made it’s way towards his mouth, canines pressed against the inside of his cheek, hard enough that he could taste salt and iron and––

“Harry,” Hermione said, fingers brushing the back of his neck, and he jumped. “The train is boarding soon. Let’s go.”

“Yeah,” he fumbles for a second, shifts his gaze towards the crowd gathered near the entrance, red lipstick on red, red cheeks and owls teetering underneath metal cages and there’s a flash of it, of his first year, and the second, cutting through his conscious in bruising, sharp clarity like the poised edge of a blade, of him with his eyes fixated on the windows of the train car, wishing there was someone he could say goodbye to. 

He blinks and his eyesight clears, snapping into focus. “Where’s Ron?”

“Probably with Cormac McLaggen,” she says. “They went to find an empty compartment, I think?”

“Hermione,” Harry said carefully. “You’re not–––You’re okay with the two of them?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Hermione said, a little bittle, teeth clenched. “Ron dating  _ Cormac McLaggen  _ of all people––that insufferable  _ prat  _ who has his head so far up in his ass that he could probably see his undigested  _ breakfast,  _ why would I be unhappy?”

“ _ Hermione–– _ ”

“ _ Kidding, _ ” she beamed as she threw her trunk onto the train, metal scraping across the platform in a harsh, harsh  _ screech. _ “Ron and I just didn’t, didn’t work out, and he’s happy, isn’t that what matters most? And McLaggen’s ego has shrinked measurably, can you believe we can actually have conversations with him without him bringing up himself every six seconds?”

Harry grinned, the curve of his mouth tugging up as he followed her into the compartment, settling next to Hermione and across from McLaggen and Ron, who had his fingers trapped in the gleaming waves of his hair, mouth pressed against skin and Harry glances away because this feels strangely intimate, and settles in the seat next to Hermione, whose smile has gone slightly sharp, acrid, but amiable nonetheless.

She clears her throat, and Ron pulls away with a harsh inhale of breath, staring dizzyingly at McLaggen as he leans back further into the seat, fingernails pounding against steel in a steady, palpitating rhythm that sets Hermione’s teeth on edge.

Harry stares at the ground awkwardly for a second before saying in an attempt to ignite conversation, “Funny, isn’t it? How we’re all going back to school again? I feel rather old.”

“Yes, interesting,” McLaggen says, yawning. “Especially for you, Harry. You’re going to have quite the fanbase, I suppose.”

Hermione rolls her eyes at this.

“You know,” Ron sneers, and Harry already feels a headache forming between the spaces of his skull, amplifying, intensifying, underneath the Hogwart’s Express hurtling forward on it’s trail. “We were at Diagon Alley earlier, and about six or seven witches cornered him and asked for an autograph, and one of them actually offered six thousand galleons for Harry to feature in a role playing –––”

“I will  _ kill  _ you.”

“It was disgustingly inappropriate,” Hermione says, flinching slightly at the memory. “If you really wanted him to role play some kinky dark lord role play, any person with a modicum of decent sense would have send him an owl!”

“Hermione!”

McLaggen is positively  _ howling  _ now. 

“ _ Oh, _ ” Ron moans, all high pitched and shot through with a whimper that breaks on the syllable. “Oh,  _ Stupefy  _ me, daddy.”

Harry spins abruptly, robes whipping in his wake, and collides his fist with the hollow of Ron’s collarbones, knuckles aligned with the curve of violet blue veins embedded beneath skin, hot, sloshing blood surging beneath the surface, across the indentations and Ron hisses and pulls back at the fervor.

“It’s okay if you two are into, er, this particular roleplay,” Harry wiggles his eyebrows. “You could’ve told me, Ron, if I turned you on so much.”

“I see there is an urgent need of subject change,” Hermione says, voice laced through with hysteria. 

That’s exactly when Draco Malfoy passes by. The world stutters, stills, splits, he can feel it crack through the air like the aftereffect of a bullet, clicked into place, aimed towards target, waiting, waiting for a signal, waiting for an alarm, a warning, to let forth chaos, waiting for the detonation, and when he turns and pins his gaze on Harry’s, Harry holds it.

“Potter,” he says curtly, like it  _ hurts,  _ like Harry’s tearing razor blades into his wrist, watching blood bloom onto surface like red, red blossoms bursting through soil. 

He wants to say something, anything at all,  _ I’m sorry,  _ runs through his nerve endings like carpal tunnel, numbness eroding at his bloodstream, all nausea and dizzyness and ache that bruises, tears at his lungs, and he falters, mouth parting and closing in search of words, but all that spills from between his teeth is sharp, stark silence that lingers.  _ I’m sorry, I’m sorry that your father was convicted. I’m sorry you made all the wrong choices. I’m sorry I spoke in court. I’m shouldn’t––– _

Malfoy looks tired, there’s fatigue imprinted underneath his eyes, marking his veins in black and blue, a constellation of weariness mapped across skin, and he looks  _ lost,  _ like he’s running from something that doesn’t exist, or perhaps running towards it, he doesn’t know why, but Harry can’t look away.

And Malfoy stares back, eyes like ruthless, unrelenting steel, mercury dripping across glass, irises gleaming underneath the illumination of the train car, and Harry swallows, and it’s like swallowing arsenic––lethal underneath the slope of his throat, tearing through flesh until he tastes salt and metal, when he realizes that his teeth have been clenching down around the inside of his mouth, canines sunk into the soft of his cheek until blood runs through his molars.

He looks away.

“Harry,” Hermione begins, fingers on his robes. “You didn’t–––you did the right thing.”

“Yeah,” he says, feigning a smile. “Sure. I don’t really want to talk about it.”

**.**

The millisecond that Harry walks into the Great Hall is when it all descends into chaos.

There’s a swarm of students that lunge towards him, like he’s prey, all screeches and breathless confessions and sixteen thousand voices, a cacophony of flashbulbs and tearing parchment and snapping quills that converge and settle through his skin like an undercurrent of sharp, sharp electricity, of eyes fixating on the fading scar on his forehead, and he smiles, like he should.

And it’s all too bright, too loud, of everything intensified, amplified and he wants it to  _ stop. _

“It’s school for chrissake,” Hermione says and Ron gives her an odd look. “Do they have to do this every time?”

“You would think I would be used to it by now,” Harry says, plopping down on his seat, once the crowd has somewhat diminished. 

“How can someone get used to  _ that, _ ” Ron shakes his head, and Hermione furrows her brow at him when the speech begins.

“....as we begin the term with heavy hearts as we have lost many loved ones; family members, friends, strangers perhaps, but we will also begin with triumph, for we know that we are always stronger, together,” McGonagall is saying, and there’s a round of applause at that, Ginny’s eyes are glinting, eyelashes aglow with diamond lined prisms. “That is why House Unity is especially important, at such a time like this. This is why we will begin a new housing requirement, in which Eighth Year students will be required to room with students of a differing House.”

_ What,  _ Harry mouths to Hermione, and she shrugs, also bewildered.  _ What the fuck? _

“Your roommates will be in the envelope in front of you,” she adds, just as an ivory envelope appears next to his metal platter. “You may now open them.”

It’s as if he almost expects it; he breaks the wax seal with his teeth, red caught between the front row, and he grimaces at the rancidness, extracting wax with his fingernails when he hears Hermione shriek, “Pansy Parkinson!”

“Ernie Macmillan,” Ron reads, mouth full. “That’s great! Ernie! We’re roommates! For a second I thought I was going to get someone terrible, like Malfoy or––”

“Who’d you get, Harry?” Hermione asks, snatching the envelope out of his fingers. “I bet it’s Justin, I have pretty good intuition.”

Written in dark, dark ink seeped across the expanse of white, creamy stationary is a name that sends Hermione reeling, but all that washes over Harry is deadly, vicious calm, the silence before a hurricane.

_ Draco Malfoy. _

 

**Author's Note:**

> so this is for jess @hermioneandtom on tumblr. honestly the best person i know. it's her birthday and you should go follow her!!!! also this is a multi chap i'll change the settings in the morning!


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